I Promise
by dragonwings90
Summary: Lapis didn't think going to this new high school would be so bad. The people here seemed friendly enough and the atmosphere of the building was rather calming. This made it all the more jarring when she stumbled upon a student who seemed to be the primary target for bullying and the butt of most jokes. Lapis then decided it was her duty to help this student no matter what the cost.
1. Chapter 1

Lapis felt the soft click of her locker's handle snapping up before watching it slowly swing open.

An empty locker. She didn't think something like this would've scared her as much as it did. Up until that point, Lapis didn't think this new school would be so bad, but once she saw the cold navy blue of the hollow locker in front of her, trepidation wordlessly settled in. She tried drowning her worries in the sound of the junior class milling about behind her. She listened to the chatter, the sound of lockers opening and closing, and the faint melody of laughter. She closed her eyes, letting this white noise soothe her nerves.

She took a deep breath and put all the supplies she wouldn't need for her next class in the tall metal safe. She put the supplies she did need into a fair sized cloth handbag with seashells and sand dollars meticulously sewn onto the front. She pulled out her schedule for the day and started walking toward her first class until she spotted a rather intimidating student headed her way. She was tall and well-built, clearly a player in one of the school's sports teams. She had very long platinum blond hair and brownish-amber eyes. This student had a group of friends that seemed to be following her as well as a casual look on her face that portrayed a strong sense of confidence and control over her surroundings.

The student stopped in front of Lapis. "Hey, the name's Jasper," she said, extending her arm in greetings. "You're new here, right?"

Lapis paused before slowly taking Jasper's hand and shaking it. "Yeah, I'm new here. And… my name's Lapis."

"Oh, pretty name," Jasper said, raising her eyebrows while still keeping her eyes half-lidded. Lapis chuckled awkwardly in response. She didn't expect to meet someone this early on who was willing to be friends with her.

"That schedule," Jasper pointed out, snapping Lapis out of her thoughts, "it'll take you far, but there are a ton of things that that schedule won't help you out with. If you need anything, come to me… or any of my stupid friends over here." The nearest group member to Jasper responded to her with a punch to the arm. They both seemed to laugh it off, but Lapis felt strangely uncomfortable watching them interact.

"Thank you," said Lapis. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind if I run into trouble."

"You got it," Jasper replied as she started walking away. Lapis followed her with her gaze and caught her sending a casual wink and a finger gun in her direction as a strange way of saying "see you later." Lapis wasn't quite sure how to respond to this encounter, but she took it positively. It was nice to think that she'd have some support in case she needed it, and despite the uncanny feeling she got from the strange bunch, she could see herself becoming friends with them.

Then, as she was watching Jasper walk away, she spotted another girl. She looked smaller than everyone else and had pale blond hair as well as a nervous demeanor. She was hugging her books tightly to her chest and hunching over slightly as if trying to avoid bringing as much remote attention to herself as possible. Her green eyes peered through fairly thin rimmed glasses and darted around like a scared cat's would.

Then they made eye contact.

Somehow, Lapis felt no urge to avert her gaze as she stared into the girl's eyes. The girl appeared to be experiencing the same thing, seeing as her gait slowed down and her worried expression began to change. Lapis was pondering why it was this one student who didn't make her nervous as she watched the girl's shoulder suddenly collide hard with one of Jasper's friends. The girl was jolted back into reality, losing grip of a few of her pencils, watching them fall to the floor with a faint clicking sound.

Jasper's friend, barely phased by the collision, promptly turned around to glare at her. "Hey, watch it!" she barked as she hit the back of the girl's arm, sending her papers and folders sliding onto the ground. She yelped at this and immediately kneeled down, scrambling to gather the scattered supplies. The group, as well as quite a few bystanders saw this and laughed - even Jasper, to Lapis's surprise. They then casually continued to walk away, as if nothing had happened at all.

The girl looked unbelievably flustered as she quickly, but not very gracefully, gathered her papers into a wrinkled pile of notes and equations. Once she was almost done reclaiming her belongings, a random student walking past kicked her pencil case a couple of yards away just as she was about to grab it. The girl unceremoniously stuffed her papers into one of her folders before awkwardly scooting forward to retrieve her pencil case. She then froze, nervously looking up to see Lapis kneeling down on one knee, pencil case in hand. "Here," Lapis said, handing the pencil case to the smaller student.

The girl looked shaken at this, hesitantly grabbing the pencil case from Lapis's hand. "Thank you- I-I-I'm sorry," the girl stammered in a timid, shaky voice. Lapis didn't have time to respond as the girl hastily fled down the hall and around the corner.

Lapis just stared for a while at the corner the girl disappeared behind. She didn't know what to think of all this. After a little bit, she decided it was best not to try, and she started down the hall for her first class.

As she entered the room and took her seat, she tried to distract herself from her thoughts by organizing her supplies. She slipped her relatively untouched notebooks and binders out of her bag and set them down. Then, she did the same with her pencils, pens, erasers, and calculator. She placed them in convenient locations on her desk and proceeded to close her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting her head hang back in the chair. There was clearly a very deep social pool in this school that she could see nothing but the surface of. She decided it was in her best interest to stay as far away from that pool as possible.

Even though the thought of this plan gave her comfort, she was finding it surprisingly hard to get that girl in the hallway out of her mind. She hadn't seen her do anything that Lapis would consider deserving of the treatment she got. She considered the possibility that she'd done something bad that only people in the school last year would know of. She saw a flaw in this theory, though: the girl in the hallway didn't appear threatening or devious - quite the contrary, actually. Her worrisome movement and oddly apologetic thank you to Lapis told her that the girl was naturally timid, especially since she acted this way to someone she'd never met before. This left Lapis perplexed, to say the least.

More people were starting to file into the room, making it uncomfortable for her to stay retreated in her mind and think about these things. Lapis surveyed the room, hoping to find something to pay attention to when she suddenly froze.

Her gaze had fallen on a familiar little girl in the back of the classroom.

The two locked eyes again, but unlike the first time, the girl looked away at once. She wore an anxious expression and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Lapis was really curious now. What was making this girl so apprehensive? Why was she treated the way she was? Did she do anything to prompt this treatment? These questions were really starting to bother her.

As time passed and the class started, her focus slowly shifted toward her work. She successfully lost herself in the warm-up math problems, thankful that the first day wouldn't be as stressful as she'd anticipated. The teacher then told them to partner up with the person sitting to their left starting with the right side of the room. Unfortunately, the girl Lapis would've liked to work with was far back in the right corner of the room, so she sighed and tried to take her mind off of her for a little while.

Lapis sat there before remembering that she, too, had to partner up with the person to her left. She looked over to see a short, tan girl who had long, platinum blond hair and a laid-back posture. She looked tired, bored, or both, but turned to look back at her nonetheless.

"Sup?" She asked, lazily raising her hand in a brief wave.

"Uhm.. hi," Lapis replied awkwardly, "What's… your name?"

"Amethyst," she answered, a friendly grin starting to develop on her face. "Yours?"

"Lapis," she responded.

Amethyst swung her arm nonchalantly toward her. "Nice to meet you." Beginning to find this girl's air calming, Lapis took her hand and smiled back. After their introduction, the teacher started explaining the assignment to the class. However, as much as Lapis wanted to pay attention, she couldn't help but look back at the girl she'd been trying to take her mind off of. She couldn't explain why, but she felt the extreme urge to check in on her now and again.

The girl's eyes flickered anxiously back and forth between her desk and the partner she'd been assigned to. The partner appeared rather displeased with whom she'd have to work with and hunched over, her head propped up with one of her hands.

Lapis watched as the girl started to play with her pencil, spinning it quietly on her desktop. She felt her heart pause as the girl accidentally flicked her pencil onto the floor, watching it roll under the desk to her left with worry. She couldn't hear what the girl was trying to whisper to her partner, but whatever it was, it was completely ignored. Even though the girl's nervous expression didn't change, Lapis felt a pang of frustration for her. The girl then leaned down to grab the pencil herself, but quickly drew back when her partner sniffed and abruptly scooted forward in her seat. With a nervous smile, the girl resorted to reaching her hand up and tapping her partner on the shoulder. This finally grabbed her attention.

Despite having a polite expression on her face, the girl was met with her angry partner straightening up and glaring at her. The girl paused when she saw this and then opened her mouth, probably to explain her little situation, but to Lapis's surprise, her words died on her tongue. She gathered enough information to tell that the partner was discreetly snapping at the girl for disturbing her. The girl looked scared at first but then, a little bit of shame seeped into her face. She just sat there, taking it without fighting back. After that, the partner returned once more to her stand-offish posture, muttering something under her breath. The little girl looked stung at whatever she'd heard and proceeded to look down at the floor, trying her hardest to hide her hurt visage.

Lapis couldn't believe what she'd seen. _'No matter what she's ever done, no one deserves to be treated like that over a goddamn pencil,'_ she thought to herself.

"What are you looking at?"

Lapis jumped. She whipped around to see Amethyst looking at her with genuine curiosity. The class had somehow begun to work without her noticing. She then perked up, realizing this was the perfect opportunity to ask about the girl. "I'm just… Who's that girl over there? Uh.. if.. you don't mind me asking."

Amethyst leaned back in her chair and craned her neck at the students behind her. "Which one?"

Lapis turned to look at the back of the class and said, "The small one with the short blond hair. She's in the corner of the room?"

"Oh.." Amethyst said, looking a little more alert. "You must be talking about Peridot. She's the nervous looking one, right?"

"Yeah, that's her!" Lapis affirmed, glad she finally had a name to refer to. It did take a bit of the wind out of her sails when it hit her that being nervous was apparently one of the girl's defining character traits.

"Yeah, Peridot is a bit…" Amethyst paused. "It-It's kind of hard to explain."

"Well at least tell my why everyone's being such an asshole to her. Did you see what happened in the hallway?"

Amethyst scratched the back of her neck. "No, I didn't exactly see it. I did see you give her her pencil case back, though. What happened?"

"One of Jasper's friends hit her stuff out of her hand, and another student came up and kicked her pencil case away from her when she was about to pick it up!" Lapis exclaimed. "It was unbelievable! All she did was bump into someone!" Amethyst paused.

"You really are new here, aren't you?" Lapis felt a shiver run down her spine that left her speechless. "Look," Amethyst continued wistfully, "I'll explain it to you sometime later - we don't have enough time now. What to you have next class?"

"Um… French," Lapis answered.

"Which room?"

"Room 602, I think."

Amethyst made a "tch" sound through her teeth and frowned. "You have lunch after that, right?"

"Yeah."

"And then what?"

"History in room 416."

"Rats… I'll just tell you next break," Amethyst finished. "That's after your history class, by the way."

"Ah… thanks." Lapis agreed to meet up with her and they spent the rest of the class doing the project they were assigned, albeit rather cluelessly considering how they both weren't really paying attention during the instructions. Every once in awhile, Lapis would glance back at Peridot to see how she was holding up. Each time she did so, the scene remained the same: the partner seemed to be laying back in her chair with her arms cradling her head while Peridot looked to be trying her best to compensate for the former's lack of effort. Lapis narrowed her eyes.

She was definitely not going to go until break without learning more about this girl.


	2. Chapter 2

"Au revoir et à bientôt!" Lapis said, bidding her French teacher goodbye.

"Bon travail aujourd'hui! Et merci, Lapis," the teacher responded. Lapis nodded back dumbly, pretending to understand what he'd said before turning to walk down the hall along with the rest of this wing's prior students. She was almost swept away by the current of juniors and sophomores desperate for a bite to eat. She eventually made her way to her locker where she'd put her lunchbox and she swapped it for her things. Normally, she would buy lunches, but she thought she'd play it safe until she knew exactly what the quality of the cafeteria's food was.

Ever since Lapis had that conversation with Amethyst about Peridot, she couldn't focus on a single thing if her life depended on it. She'd buried herself in thoughts of how she'd approach the little junior and made up fantasy scenarios about it, some of which ended up well, and some of which did not.

She put those thoughts out of her mind as she headed toward the main office, knowing that the cafeteria was right next to it. As she entered, she was taken aback by just how big it was. The sound of the crowd washed over her like a tidal wave and she had to take a moment standing in the doorway to adjust to it.

After that, she wandered in, clutching her lunch bag tightly, scanning the tables in front of her. She then saw exactly what she'd been looking for.

Peridot sat at a table in the lonely corner of the room to her right. Everyone seemed to have purposely sat as far from her as possible, as if they were two like ends of a magnet. No one was sitting at her table, keeping her company. The sight made something in Lapis's chest feel like it'd been plucked, but she headed for the table, determined to fill the void everyone seemingly abandoned her in.

She took a deep breath as she approached, rehearsing what she'd say first to Peridot in her head over and over again as if she were walking into a job interview. Peridot didn't bat an eye toward the bluenette until she stopped and placed her lunchbox down on the table. She looked up and then slightly to either side anxiously as if planning some kind of elaborate escape route. Lapis calmly sat down across from her and pushed her lunchbox to the side, leaving open space between the two. She extended her right hand and rested her elbow on the table. "Hi. My name's Lapis." Her voice was soft and reassuring.

"U-Um…" Peridot muttered almost inaudibly. They only made a flicker of eye contact before the little blonde looked down and off to the side, pulling her hands off the table and wringing them worriedly.

Lapis gave her a sympathetic smile. "It's okay. I'm not gonna bite." Hearing this, Peridot's gaze shyly met with Lapis's. She cautiously pulled her right hand out from under the table. Their hands were almost touching when suddenly, Peridot paused. She pulled back a bit and her expression turned almost skeptical. Lapis looked at her, vexed. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Peridot didn't say anything for a moment, but Lapis gave her time to think and gather the courage she was clearly lacking. "Are you from over there?" she finally asked, pointing to the table Jasper and her friends were sitting at.

"Huh? Oh, n-no, I just came here to sit with you," Lapis answered with a hint of concern. She watched as the girl's eyes shifted from Jasper's table to her and back to Jasper's table again.

Peridot suddenly wore an expression that looked to be an unsettling blend of frustration and disappointment. "I'm not stupid. You can tell them I'm not falling for this again."

Lapis looked at Jasper's table before looking back to Peridot, curiously asking her, "Falling... for what?"

"You know exactly what," she responded with a ghost of a scowl.

"I.. I really don't know..." Lapis cut herself off as she realized what might be the cause of this sudden distrust. "Do you remember me?" Lapis asked. Peridot looked confused now and shook her head waiting silently for an explanation. "We met in the hallway this morning. I… picked up your pencil case for you?"

Lapis could see the girl's figure stiffen and her eyes grow wide. She appeared to be at a loss for words, and she looked more nervous than ever. She ducked her head down and looked off to the side. This look rung a bell to Lapis as she thought she'd seen this expression on her face before. When it hit her where she'd seen it from, she immediately felt a pang of sadness for the little junior in front of her. It was the same face she made while her partner from math class was fiercely berating her. Peridot looked this way because she was expecting Lapis to do the same.

"N-No, no, no, it's fine!" Lapis rushed out. "You're okay - I-I forget people like that all the time!" Peridot looked up diffidently, clearly still worried she'd done something wrong.

"Don't you worry about that," Lapis said, regaining composure. "What's your name?"

"Um…" Lapis could hear Peridot's sneakers rubbing together anxiously under the table. "I'm… Peridot."

"Nice to meet you, Peridot," Lapis said with a friendly grin. She inched her still extended arm toward her again. Remembering the hand was still out, Peridot pulled her own hand out from under the table. The small palm met with Lapis's softly and timidly. Lapis could tell a lot about a person by the way they shook hands, and Peridot was clearly someone who wouldn't ever expect anyone to come up to her and offer friendship. Lapis felt a strange sense of wholesomeness from the way they interacted. She knew right away that she had to become friends with this person, but she knew she had to take it one step at a time.

"So, whatcha got?" Lapis asked as she started pulling things out of her lunch bag.

It took a few minutes for Peridot to open up to her, but once she did, they caught on right away. The two spent the rest of the lunch period chatting about thrilling conversation topics such as why pomegranates were the cool hipsters of fruits and carrots were the nobles of vegetables. For some reason, Lapis deeply enjoyed listening to the smaller girl drone on and on about various fruits. She could feel a strangely warm bond forming between them, despite the small amount of time they'd spent in one another's presence.

"Dragon fruits are just about the coolest looking fruits in existence, but their taste is actually pretty underwhelming," Peridot told Lapis with credence. She giggled at the girl's surprisingly vast knowledge of exotic fruits, and Peridot responded to this with a shy simper.

Lapis's heart jumped when she realized that this was the first time she'd seen Peridot genuinely smile, and it was because of something she did. It made some inscrutable warm and soft feeling fill her lungs and simmer to the rest of her body. She gave the littler girl a content smile back.

People then started to get up and put their trays away. Lapis saw this and turned to Peridot. "Hey, wanna meet up sometime later? Maybe next lunch?"

Peridot's smile immediately dropped. This was an emotional shift so unexpected that Lapis had to stop whatever she was doing that moment to ask what was wrong.

"Uh, it… it's just that…" Peridot stammered, "It's… It's not that I don't... It's-It's just…" Lapis looked disconcerted but perplexed as she listened to the short blonde. "It's just… I'm not the person you're going to want to be around here."

Lapis reeled back. "What? Why not?" she asked, trying to keep her relaxed composure.

"Just.. Just trust me, I-"

Lapis felt her skin crawl as she noticed Peridot's eyes suddenly widening at someone behind her. She heard a familiar voice come from the same direction.

"Hey, Lapis! How've you been holding up?" Jasper called out not too far away.

"Hi Jasper!" Lapis exclaimed, prompting her to clear her throat and recover from the sharp voice crack she'd let out. "Um… I've been doing well… How've you been?"

Jasper gave a short puff of a laugh. "Fine, I guess." She paused for a moment. "Hey, what do you have next?"

"English class in…" Lapis pulled the folded up schedule out from her pocket and examined it. "...room 362."

"Oh, my next class is in the same wing. Wanna walk there with me?"

Lapis was surprised at this proposal, but didn't see any reason to decline. "Sure, I just need to get my stuff first. It's back at my locker."

"Oh, okay. You go ahead - I'll catch up with you in a minute," Jasper replied happily. "I just need a moment. I gotta talk with this one over here," she said, relaxedly throwing a thumb behind her to Peridot who looked shocked at the gesture.

"Oh, um.. Yeah, sure!" A strange sense overcame Lapis as she agreed to this. she wasn't sure why she felt strange; Jasper didn't really have a malevolent look about her. And sure, she might have laughed at Peridot in the hallway, but it wasn't like it was her who slapped the books and binders out of the little junior's hands. Besides, she might have just laughed because she didn't have all the information. She was at the front of the group, after all, while Peridot was at the back.

While these thoughts soothed Lapis, she couldn't shake the vague sense of uncertainty as she exited the cafeteria. This feeling only grew until it finally hit her.

'I don't know where room 362 is,' Lapis thought to herself. She sighed and headed back to the cafeteria where most people had already left for their next class. She leaned around the corner of the entrance in the direction of Jasper and Peridot and opened her mouth to say something.

She immediately discontinued her thoughts as she laid eyes on a sight that had no business being there. In the corner she'd expected to see the two chatting, she instead saw Peridot backing up as Jasper spoke to her with a clearly less-than-friendly tone. Jasper was casually closing in on her, but not nearly at the speed Peridot was backing away. The short-haired girl's back hit the smooth, white, cement wall with a jolt and a look of dread. Lapis couldn't quite hear what Jasper was saying to her, but from the way she stood towering over the littler girl, Jasper appeared confident and confronting. She looked to be hissing something at Peridot that made her shake her head vigorously and raise her hands with worry. Without warning, Jasper furiously slammed her right hand into the wall mere inches away from the small junior's head, making her jump and let out a pitiful noise of distress. Peridot was cowering now. She tried to press herself into the corner and make herself look as small as she could. Her arms were raised but glued to her chest feebly, trying to protect herself from whatever Jasper was going to do. She was visibly shaking and had her head ducked down, her eyes shut tightly, waiting for it to be over.

Lapis whipped back out of sight and pressed herself against the wall. Her heart was beating hard in her chest like a caged bird. She rushed to think up something she could do. Coming up with a rough plan, she called out Jasper's name.

"Uh- Yes, Lapis?" Jasper responded. Only then did Lapis take a step into the room. She noticed that Jasper was now standing a respectable distance away from Peridot, wearing a calm and collected expression on her face. Peridot, meanwhile, didn't budge from her terrified stance until she cautiously peeked out and saw Lapis standing a ways away. Seeing this, she immediately stiffened and rushed to make it look as if nothing was wrong.

"Um… I don't know where room 362 is," she said, scratching the back of her neck and trying her very best to look as if she hadn't seen what went on.

"Oh," Jasper responded, smiling cooly. "Just go get the stuff from your locker and I'll meet you there in a sec."

Peridot wore an expression that conveyed a sense of hopeless dread. She clearly didn't want to be left alone with Jasper again. "I-I… um…" Lapis sputtered, "I forgot where that is, too. I'm… not very good with this stuff." Lapis couldn't help holding her breath as she waited for the intimidating girl to respond.

Jasper seemed to fall for it and agreed to show her where her locker was again. Lapis let out a relieved exhale and beckoned her over, glad to have this little episode come to a close. As the two walked out of the cafeteria, Lapis caught Jasper sending Peridot a dirty look. Lapis turned around and called out to Peridot, who was still standing in the corner wearing a bewildered yet relieved expression, "See you later!"

Peridot raised her hand in a timid wave, but did nothing else.


	3. Chapter 3

English class slunk by so slowly, it almost drove Lapis crazy. She was finding it harder and harder to focus on her school work as the day went on. She studied the clock as the last seconds of the class scraped painfully by, the soft ticking and the red seconds hand feeling like the middle finger of time itself.

Never had she felt so eager to discuss another person before in her life. She wanted nothing more than to spill everything that happened at lunch to Amethyst during the upcoming break. She listened to the unmistakable sound of one or two bags packing up early as the end of class crawled closer and closer and closer until...

"Alright, take it easy guys," the teacher said as more students began to gather their things.

Lapis wasted no time shoveling her things into her bag and dashing out of the room in a hurry. She headed straight for the student lounge where Amethyst suggested they'd meet up. She saw her sitting at a table rather far from everyone else, but she didn't take the time to question it.

Amethyst jumped as Lapis leaped into the chair across from her. "Well you seem eager," she joked half-heartedly.

Without acknowledging the greeting, Lapis bluntly told her, "I talked to Peridot at lunch."

Amethyst's eyes widened. "What? How?" she asked, clearly bewildered. Once she saw the confused look on the bluenette's face, she followed this up with an explanation that only fanned the flames of Lapis's curiosity. "Usually, when someone approaches her in the caf, she gets up and leaves."

"Just… Just tell me a bit about her first, please," Lapis requested, wanting to use their time together as productively as possible.

Amethyst paused. "Okay, I guess. What do you want to know?"

Lapis wasted no time. "Why is she so nervous around everyone? And why does everyone act like such assholes to her?"

"Those two questions kinda answer each other," Amethyst told her. "She's been a common target for as long as I can remember. During elementary and middle school, she was always over-enthusiastic and expressive about the things she liked, which, as you can imagine, didn't do wonders for her reputation among the grade. And even though she toned this down around 6th grade, people continued to find her an easy outlet for their pre-teen angst. It's only gotten worse since then, and it didn't take very long for the people in our grade to just kind of accept her as the class... stress toy. And it doesn't help that, at this point, she's withdrawn so much from everyone around her that no one wants to approach her, and she doesn't want to approach anyone."

Lapis was still extremely confused. "But… But she's always really nice."

Amethyst looked tired all of a sudden. "Yeah," she murmured, "that's probably the saddest part of it all."

Lapis tried to get past this, knowing that there would be a time and a place to process all this information later. She pushed on to ask more questions. "When I sat with her at lunch today, she thought I came from Jasper's table for some reason and got really upset. She thought I was trying to trick her or something…" She stared down the platinum blonde, begging with her eyes for an explanation.

Amethyst sighed. "I've sometimes seen Jasper's group send people over to pretend that they want to be her friend for a while. Sometimes this would be a brief distraction while someone else poured milk in her bag or something, and other times, it would go on for several days where the person would just… gather information about her that would later be used against her in various… ways."

Lapis couldn't believe what she was hearing. She stayed quiet for a moment, her mind outright rejecting the possibility that anyone would harbor this kind of mentality while Amethyst patiently waited. Lapis sighed. "Jasper seems to be the head of all this. Just as I was leaving the cafeteria, I caught Jasper… threatening Peridot or something. She looked really angry, but Peridot didn't do anything wrong. Jasper looked quite happy before I left, too… and she tried to hide it from me when I made my presence known."

Amethyst looked at her with confusion for the first time. "Well that's unusual. She usually enjoys picking on Peridot; it's rare to see her doing it with serious intent. I don't know why she…" Amethyst paused. "How long did you sit with Peridot?"

"Uh… the whole period?"

Amethyst looked deep in thought. "Have you interacted directly with Jasper at all yet?"

"Yes, and she's been nothing but nice to me," Lapis explained.

She and Amethyst talked for the rest of the break about her experiences with Jasper and Peridot. She talked about their introduction, their conversations, and Jasper's offer at the end of the lunch period.

"When I proposed to Peridot that we meet up again next lunch, she got really nervous and told me that she's 'not the person I'd want to hang out with around here.' What did she mean by that?"

Amethyst hummed at the question. "It's not uncommon for anyone who attempts to become friends with her to turn into targets themselves. I wouldn't put it past the people in our grade to go out of their way to keep Peridot their quiet little punching bag. This would include isolating her from any potential friends. I'm actually surprised that Jasper's been so nice to you. Considering how much time you've spent with Peridot, surely by now she would've at least kicked a soccer ball hard in your general direction."

The number of people passing them in the hall steadily increased, and noticing this, Amethyst pulled out her phone and checked the time. "Look," she said, "I don't have any more time to talk to you about this today, but let's talk about it tomorrow. Same time, same place, okay?"

Lapis was desperate for more information, but wistfully accepted the offer and walked off to her next class. So many thoughts and emotions were weighing her down. Lapis couldn't possibly imagine being in Peridot's shoes. She couldn't put herself in Jasper's shoes either, though for different reasons. 'How could anyone possibly find joy out of tormenting such an innocent person?' she thought to herself. She quickly found herself forming a strong distaste toward the idea of becoming friends with Jasper. She no longer wanted to associate herself with someone of such a headspace.

One thing was for certain, though. Lapis was going to help Peridot, and she was going to let nothing stop her from doing so.

By the end of the day, Lapis had formed a game plan. The next time she and Peridot would meet, she would suggest they study together in the library after school. She needed someone to help her with the summer work she couldn't have done herself anyway, and no one felt better of a tutor than the small, quiet blonde.

What she didn't anticipate was how soon that meeting would come.


End file.
